


Dark Matter Magic

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [183]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 22:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18214193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: No one knows where dragons came from, or what their purpose is. But Sam has a few thoughts to share on the matter - and a few memories, too.





	Dark Matter Magic

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> In this instance of the universe, Blaine is a dragonslayer and dragons are walking the earth, terrorizing and killing people by the hundred. This is the story of how Sam met him, and how she fell in love with him.  
> Written for [The Clash of the Writing Titans #9](https://www.landedifandom.net/tag/cow-t-9/), [Week 6](https://www.landedifandom.net/cowt9-week6/), Mission 4, prompt: dragon.  
> 

Sam thinks no matter how much they would prefer for it not to be like that, people have to accept the fact that no one knows where dragons come from, or where they were before they surfaced on the Earth. Some people may guess, naturally, some of them believe dragons laid dormant underneath the surface of the Earth until something shook them off their sleeping state, forcing them to break their stone coffins and cut through the skies, some others believe dragons fell from the very sky they so love to fly around through, that a comet helped them cross the universe and delivered them to the Earth, and some others even believe that dragons must be nothing else but simple genetic mutations, that an animal species or, who knows!, even a human race, secluded in some isolated area for hundreds of years, must have finally evolved into the shape of a dragon just to come back to the rest of the world and rule it with terror and destruction.

Sam never really had an interest in thinking about such things. Not only he’s got too much going on in his head to waste time thinking about where the dragons came from – especially since knowing where they’re from won’t help humanity in getting rid of them in any way – but in addition to that he was only just a toddler when the dragons destroyed the world, and they’ve never been gone since that moment on. He has learned, through the years, to see their presence as equally natural as he would’ve seen the presence of a dog.

You don’t question why dogs exist. You don’t wonder where they’re from. You just know they’re there, that they’ve been since the beginning and they’ll be until the end. And that’s pretty much it.

The only thing that makes dragons interesting, in his opinion, is Blaine’s attitude towards them.

Blaine is Sam’s best friend. They’ve been friends since the day they first met. It was raining, Sam remembers that well, and he was stuck into a wrecked building in the part of the city that the people hadn’t yet been able to rebuild after the first majestic attack the dragons had conducted against it after appearing out of nowhere twenty years before. The neighborhood had obviously been abandoned, and after the death of his parents Sam had started scavenging it for supplies because, over the course of the last couple decades, it had been the home of many nomad groups of people who arrived there from other cities and sometimes other countries, stayed in the area for a few days not to mingle with the city people, and then left as they had come, mostly unnoticed, always leaving something behind – food, clothes, less often valuable items that he could bargain for money at the pawn shop downtown.

The area had been known to be dragon-free for a few years, already, and Sam had always ran around through it freely, when a dragon had suddenly decided, that day of all days, that it would’ve been interesting to take a walk in the surroundings, and when Sam had felt the earth shake underneath his own feet, and the temperature of the air rise uncontrollably as it always did when a dragon was around, he had ran to hide inside one of the buildings, which was where he was then, hoping the dragon wouldn’t smell him, that it would see that nothing interesting was happening there – and no one interesting was hiding there, either – and it would have flown away.

Of course he knew that was not going to happen, and so, when he saw the rounded circle of the dragon’s eye appear in the squared window frame next to his head, he didn’t even think about running away. There would have been no time for it and the dragon would’ve gotten to him anyway – at least, if he let it swallow him without making a fuss, he could’ve hoped for a quick and as less painful as possible death, while if he ran away he could’ve inspired the dragon to start a game of cat and mouse that would’ve led to a slow, painful death preceded by the loss of one or many different limbs before it was over.

So, when the eye appeared he just stared into it, into its amber-colored, seemingly alive depths. The eyes of the dragons always seemed like liquid fire, under the surface of which demonic creatures swam, creating circles and ripples with their movements.

Sam knew that well. He had been this close to a dragon’s eye too on the day his parents had been devoured.

As the dragon slowly parted its jaws, igniting its fire gland to be ready to spit burning death against him, Sam made peace with the idea of dying the same way his parents did, and closed his eyes, accepting his fate and fully surrendering to it.

That was when Blaine came into his life. The very incarnation of refusing to surrender to anyone’s fate.

He came running and yelling to catch the dragon’s attention, and when the beast pulled back from the window Blaine somersaulted and projected himself through the window frame, fast like a bullet. Sam could barely identify him as a human being, he didn’t even seem real, he looked like a ball of pure energy, dark matter ready to blow the world up.

He unfolded in mid-air, 40 feet off the ground, and pointed an extraordinarily huge gun towards the dragon. He seemed suspended by magic, Sam couldn’t help staring at him expecting him to fall on the ground, but he seemed to be floating with the wind, as though he had wings of his own, as though he was a dragon himself. He would’ve later understood that that moment of suspension, though long, eternal, from his point of view, hadn’t lasted more than a few brief moments, but for the rest of his life he would’ve regarded Blaine as a flying creature, omnipotent.

The gun had started shining with a light that looked much more like dragon fire than anything else Sam had ever seen in his life, and when the bullet had been shot Sam could clearly see it wasn’t exactly a bullet but a fire ball, exactly like the ones some dragons shot, the races who weren’t able to produce a continuous fire stream.

One bullet, then another and both the dragon’s eyes were hit, and as the beast screeched and started flailing his limbs around in a panic the flying bringer of death had taken the chance to charge a much bigger shot and shoot it straight down the dragon’s throat through its wide-open jaws.

In a matter of seconds the dragon was burning from the inside, launching one last desperate scream before falling limp to the ground, causing an earthquake that would’ve made a couple wrecked buildings in the near vicinity to collapse.

The guy had finally landed on the street, near to the corpse, and Sam had watched him from the window as he put away his gun, wore a pair of thick leather gloves and fetched a sharp, huge knife from the belt he was wearing around his waist.

He had throws himself down the rickety stairs and into the street, staying a few feet away from him because he was getting too close to the dead dragon for comfort. Sam knew the beast was dead, but still, the idea of coming so close to it was scary.

“You can come closer, if you want,” the guy had said as he proceeded to point the knife against the lower side of the dragon’s neck, slicing its skin and digging in its dark-blooded flesh underneath, “Just don’t touch the blood. It’s poisonous.”

Sam had swallowed some fear and had moved towards him, keeping himself at safe distance. He was almost as scared of the guy as he was of the dragon. But he was way more fascinated by the guy than he had ever been by any dragon, and in the end that fascination won, compelling him to settle next to him and watch him work his way into the depths of the corpse.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m searching for its fire gland.”

“What’s a fire gland?”

The guy had turned to look at him with shameless contempt. “The gland where the dragon produces its fire, of course. Where did you think it came from, its stomach?”

Sam actually had no idea where dragon fire came from, much as he didn’t have a clue where dragons came from, so he shrugged. “What do you need it for?”

“My gun,” the guy had answered, reaching into the dragon’s body with both hands and finally managing to cut what he needed from it – an unexpectedly small, rounded, fleshy organ that pulsed softly, like a little heart, except that it did with a little glow instead than a heartbeat. “It spits fire because it’s charged with a fire gland. Once it’s exhausted I can’t use it anymore. This dragon was quite a stroke of luck, I was almost out of juice.”

Sam had no idea there were body parts humans could cut out of dragons and use within weapons. He had no idea there could be anyone powerful enough to defeat a dragon by himself – let alone a boy that couldn’t have been a day or two older than he was.

“Who are you…?” he uttered, staring at the guy with his eyes wide open.

The guy had taken his time to set the freshly cut fire gland withing his weapon, before turning back towards him as he discarded the exhausted one throwing it away behind his back. “Name’s Blaine,” he had said with a shrug. “You?”

“Samuel,” he had answered, and then he had corrected himself, “Sam.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” Blaine had taken off one of his gloves and had shaken his hand, “Where do you live? Do you have anything to eat there?”

Guiding him towards his crooked refuge in the safest part of the city, Sam had known three things for sure: first, that now he knew something so different and new there was no chance that, from now on, his life could’ve been the same as it had been until the day before; second, that a typhoon wouldn’t have been enough to unhinge him from Blaine’s side from that day forward; and third, that he was madly in love with him. Three things that wouldn’t have changed in the years to come.

Blaine had settled with him right from that first night, taking his half of the raggedy bundle of worn out blankets Sam used to call bed. He had been very disappointed with the place, it was messy, in his opinion, and uncomfortable. Too small and smelly, and lacking of all basic comforts. When Sam had asked him where he had lived up to that point, he had simply answered “on the streets”.

“How is my place less comfortable that sleeping on the streets?” he had asked.

Blaine had shrugged. “At least, from there, I can see the stars.” It hadn’t sounded half bad, as an answer.

Since that moment on, however, Blaine had made sure to improve their living conditions a little bit more every day. He offered himself and his gun to serve the patrols scouting the unclaimed areas of the city for dragons, and he took care of the beasts whenever he found one. At first, he asked for food in exchange for his services. Later on, for money. At some point, someone offered him a better place to stay if he helped him retrieve the fire gland of one of the dark, thick-skinned ones, the fire of which was known as the hottest on earth. Blaine managed, as he managed everything else in his life, and when it was time to leave the refuge he packed everything up, including things that were never his to begin with, and just as he was about to leave with everything Sam owned he stopped by the door frame, turned around and said: “What the hell are you waiting for? Come on! You left me packing everything up by myself but surely you’re not expecting me to carry you all the way to our new place, are you?”

Only then, Sam had understood that Blaine had taken for granted right from the start that they would move together, the same way they had slept and eaten together for the past six months. 

He had followed him, and once in their new home – a nice little apartment in the outskirts of the city, close to a little wildwood the dragons stirred away from because of how thickly the trees’ branches were intertwined together – he had asked Blaine why had he wanted him to come with.

Blaine had looked at him for the longest time, as though wondering how could it be possible to be so stupid, and then he had answered. “What kind of a question is that? Because I like you. Isn’t it obvious?”

By then, he was around fifteen, Sam had already started wearing skirts and feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, though he was still pretty far away from finally realizing that the reason why he felt bad was that _he_ could’ve never feel good, and the only way to feel good he had was to turn into _her_. But up to that moment no one had ever told him they _liked_ him, and those simple words had been enough to make him feel pretty fine for at least a few hours. It was a small mercy compared to a lifetime of awkward pain, admittedly, but still better than nothing, and as he wondered why only Blaine, of all people, had been able to make him feel like that when not even his parents, back when they were still alive, had managed, he had finally realized that Blaine had succeeded only because he himself, Sam, had given him the power to do that. By turning him into his rock, his home, his very North Star, Sam had given him the power to fix, with but a few words, years and years of struggles.

Later that night, after going to sleep next to him in the bed they had decided to keep sharing, he had woken up in the middle of the night feeling emptiness by his side. Guided by self-preservation and nothing more, he had sat up throwing a horrified look at the empty room surrounding him, thinking, in a panic, that Blaine must’ve left, and if he had he needed to find him. He didn’t care about the house, the bed, the money or the food, he didn’t even care about feeling safe, he could take starving and living in danger and dirty if he was by his side.

He got up from the bed and he took a few steps outside only to find him sitting down on the grass in the small, unkempt garden they had in the back, facing the woods. He kept his face tilted upwards and his eyes closed, receiving the pale shine of the moon on his skin as he’d have done with the sun had he been sunbathing.

“I thought you left,” he uttered, sitting next to him. Blaine didn’t move, he sat there, still, barely parting his lips to speak.

“Why would I?”

Sam shrugged. He didn’t know why, he just expected to be left behind, at some point. “I didn’t see you.”

“I just don’t really like sleeping in beds.”

Sam frowned, turning to look at him. “Then why did you want to move in this place? If you wanted to sleep on the floor, we could’ve kept doing it in my old place.”

“But you didn’t want to keep sleeping on the floor,” Blaine said, finally meeting his eyes. Not even the darkness of the night could do a thing to tame the golden brilliance of his pupils. 

“So… you did all this for me?”

“Why do you find it so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know,” Sam had looked away, “Maybe I’m just not used to people doing anything for anyone else but themselves.”

“You should be used to me, by now.”

“I have no idea who or what you are,” Sam sighed, gathering his knees to his chest, “Half the times, when you do something, I have no idea why. Or how, for that matter. When I watch you fight you don’t even seem real. You’re confusing.”

Blaine burst into laughing, throwing his head back. It was the first time Sam had seen or heard him laugh like that – it felt good. “I can be a little mysterious, I admit it. But I’m real alright. And anyway, if I haven’t told you anything about me, it’s because you never asked.”

Sam kept for himself the fact that if he hadn’t asked about any detail concerning his past it certainly wasn’t for a lack of curiosity, but because being with him and sharing his adventurous life, speaking with the patrols and fighting fire-spitting dragons and then being invited as guest within the inner circles of the noblemen and women of the city to show off and eat and drink food he never even believed could exist, felt too good to be true. It was like a bubble dream he was scared to burst if he ever dared to question it.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, and Blaine chuckled.

“What are you even sorry of? I was completely alone when I met you. We’ve been together ever since and I demanded everything of you. That you shared your place, your food, the things you scavenged, your undivided admiration and attention...” he added with a naughty smirk to which Sam answered blushing and hitting him on his nape, forcing another short laughter out of his throat. “I can accept a little drilling. Ask away.”

Suddenly presented with the possibility of just asking him whatever he wanted to know about him, for a second Sam paused, his brain so crowded with questions he couldn’t just pick one up. Then, everything had cleared up in his head, and it was as though seeing the fog lifting from the land.

Since they had started living together he had known a strong, determinate person, an untouchable hero, as careless as he was brave, a proud young man who knew what he was capable of and wasn’t afraid to ask compensation for it.

He knew everything he needed about the Blaine he had shared the bed with. The only Blaine he didn’t know was the one he could never see.

“Who were you before we met?” he asks then, and the question seemed to give Blaine pause. He looked at him with puzzled eyes, for a moment, and then his baffled expression turned into a softer one as his lips curled at the corners in an amused smile.

“My father turned me into the person I was when you met me,” he said, “He was a dragonslayer. And since I was very young he made sure he taught me everything I needed to know to become a dragonslayer myself. He knew the world before, a world without dragons, and he instinctively knew that world would have never come back, so he wanted me to be prepared for it. That’s why he trained me.”

“And… what about your mom?”

“I forgot about her,” Blaine shrugged, “I was very young when she died. Younger than you were when you lost yours. I forgot her face soon, and dad stopped taking about her, after a while, because he told me it was painful for him to try and tell me about her and see in my eyes that I had no idea what he was talking about. I could understand, so I didn’t insist, but that’s how my mom got lost in time, and if I could do it all again I would demand for my father to keep telling me about her, no matter how painful it’d be for him, because it would have been my right to remember her.”

“You don’t even miss her?”

“I miss missing her,” Blaine said, looking back up at the sky, “One of the few things I remember my dad telling me was that she had a great aim, especially at a distance. She was deadly with her fire gun. I wish I could miss a person like that, you know? Instead, even when I gold this gun, which was her gun, I feel nothing for her. Because I never really knew her.”

Sam looked down, hiding his chin behind his knees. “That’s very sad,” he said, “I miss my parents. I’m glad I can miss them. But I would’ve never said that you might be a sad person. You’re never sad.”

Blaine shrugs and lies down on the grass, crossing his arms behind his head. “A person I knew wouldn’t have agreed with you.”

“Who?”

“A guy I was with for a while, after my dad died. I like living alone, you know, but somehow I never manage to. Somewhere down the road I find someone willing to take me in, like you. He was different than you, but he knew me more or less like you do.”

“Very little?”

“You know me much more than the majority of people I met in my life,” he smiled. “He knew me well enough too. He said I was guided by a deep sadness that could never be quenched. That there was nothing but sadness inside me, and all my words and actions were just attempts at smothering it out. I don’t know, I wouldn’t describe myself as a sad person, but you know, a blind man wouldn’t describe himself as blind if he just didn’t know what it meant to see.”

Sam looked at him for a long while, suppressing the shivers coming from the damp coldness of the night. He had never heard him speak so much and long, about anything, really, especially his past. He craved more of it, so he kept asking questions.

“Where is this person, now?”

“His name was Alan,” Blaine answered, his smile waning a little, “He died last year. People around me tend to do that.” He turned again to look at him. “That’s why I think this is a better place, for you. You’ll be safer here. Dragons don’t like woods like that one,” he said, pointing to the woods with his chin, “Too messy to fly through. They can’t hunt through them, they can’t hide in them, they’re useless to them. They don’t even get close to them.”

“I don’t care about being safe,” Sam muttered, looking down, “You’re never safe. You’re always out there, fighting. I…” he swallowed, “I want to fight beside you.”

Blaine turned to look at him, blinking rapidly, and then laughed again, shaking his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Some people are made to fight, some others are made to do different things. You’re not a fighter, Sam. You’ve gotta find your own thing.”

“And what’s it gonna be?”

Blaine shrugged. “I don’t know, and if you don’t either it just means it’s too soon to know. Someday you’ll know, and you’ll be useful too.”

“You mean I’m useless, right now?” Sam pouted. 

Blaine laughed again, and with every one of those laughter Sam could feel his own spirit soar. He wanted to become like that, as an adult. Be a person whose laughter made the universe sing. (Despite the fact that Blaine wasn’t an adult at all and it was a little awkward to use a kid just like him as an example in adulthood.) “I guess you’re useful on a small scale and useless on a bigger scale. I believe everyone has a purpose – for now, you’re useful to me, because you make me happy and you give me something to come back to while I run through the fire, but I highly doubt that’s your final purpose in life.”

Sam swallowed again, dwelling on Blaine’s last words. “I… give you something to come back to?”

“Yeah,” Blaine nodded, nonchalantly watching the sky, as though he had said nothing important, “You know, what we have gives me something to look forward to. When I’m out chasing some beast or another I think that I’ve gotta make it home to you.”

“Why?”

Blaine grinned. “’Cause I love the way you look at me when I tell you how much of a hero I’ve been.”

“You’re the worst,” Sam protested, slapping him on his nape again, amidst his amused chuckling. It got on his nerves, sometimes, the easiness with which Blaine spoke about the fact that he knew Sam liked him. It was something Sam himself still struggled to accept in its wholeness, and it was annoying that Blaine took it for granted like that. “One day your ego will be the death of you.”

“Nah, one day my ego will be the weapon I will use to live the life I want to live.”

“And how would that life look like, tell me.”

“Well, first of all I want to get out of this city,” he propped himself up on his elbows and started counting on his fingers, “Not anytime soon, of course. First, I need to see you all settled down well. But at some point I’ll leave. I wanna travel the world.”

“You wanna see different countries?”

“It’s not much what I wanna see, but what I wanna do,” Blaine shrugged, “I believe my purpose is to travel the world and decimate dragons. At some point this city will be rid of them and I won’t be useful here anymore. That’s when I’ll leave. I plan on traveling to the most remote villages and offer them my help to rid their area of dragons too.”

“Out of the goodness of your generous heart?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve got no goodness and I doubt I even have a heart,” Blaine smirked, “No, of course I wanna be paid. Food, beverages, a place to stay… who know, sex? Sky’s the limit.”

Sam’s heart skipped a beat and his breath got stuck in his throat as he watched him. “Sex?”

“Yeah, you know that things people do in groups of two or more, to--”

“I know what sex is, thank you very much,” Sam blushed wildly, “I just didn’t think you could accept it as currency.”

“Why not?” Blaine chuckles, “I bargain for a living. I bargain for everything. I saved your life for a place to crash, I killed dragons for fire glands, food and money, even for this apartment. I would gladly bargain for sex, too.”

“You wouldn’t need to kill dragons for sex,” Sam whispered under his breath, looking away. He was half hoping Blaine wouldn’t have heard him, but deep inside himself he knew it was impossible. He had spoken _because_ he wanted Blaine to hear. And as soon as the words had escaped his mouth he sat there, motionless, waiting for whatever reaction might come from him.

Blaine stirred slowly by his side – Sam could hear the glass rustle underneath his body. He was moving, and moving closer, judging by the change in temperature around him.

Sam closed his eyes, inhaling his scent. He smelled wild, like blood and battle, all the time, whether he washed himself or not. It was a pungent scent that needed some getting used to, but once you made it yours it held you captive, and you started craving it like oxygen.

“Sam,” Blaine said, “I never touched because I’ve got no fucking clue what to do with you, you know that, right?”

Sam shivered, his whole body screaming in terror, begging him to move away, while he forced him to stay exactly in place.

“I’m not sure about that,” he whispered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Blaine leaned in, placing a half-open kiss on the curve of his shoulder, “You look like a freaking goddess. Your skin is amazing and I’d get lost in your hair, but you look like you hate your body, always hiding it out as you do, and I didn’t know what you’d do if I touched you. It’s as simple as that.”

Sam raised his hand and pressed it palm open against Blaine’s mouth, squeezing his eyes. “Stop… stop saying things like that so lightly. I struggle with it.”

“I know,” Blaine kept talking against his palm, “I can’t understand why, but I know. But if you think, in all the months we’ve slept together, that I never tried to kiss you because I didn’t like you, you’re dead wrong.”

“...I don’t even know what I think about that,” Sam sighed, shaking his head, “Sometimes I do, you know? Hate my body. Like I ended up inhabiting it because of some sort of mistaken assignment. I hate it because it doesn’t look like me and on those days I’d tear my skin off my flesh if I could. Some other days I’m not that violent, I just… don’t feel it. Like I wasn’t even inside this shell.” He sighed again, resting against him, craving the warmth of his body. “I don’t know how you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Be so confident in your skin. Nothing ever shakes you.”

“This is because I am exactly as I was meant to be,” Blaine shrugged nonchalantly, “I was lucky. I believe it’s different for you.”

Sam barely tilted his head, searching for Blaine’s eyes. He found them looking straight at him, unapologetically. Blaine knew no shame – the best and the worst things could come out of his mouth with the same ease and freedom, and he felt guilt about either. He always and only spoke his mind, which was quite a good character trait and, at the same time, a huge pain in the ass.

“You didn’t lie,” Sam said, “When you said you like me.”

“No,” Blaine shook his head and leaned in, pressing his lips against Sam’s for a brief moment, “And I know you like me. I see the way you look at me. But, Sam, you know I like honesty, and I’ve gotta be honest with you: we’re not meant to be together.”

“Ouch.”

“Don’t take it a bad way,” Blaine smiled and kissed him again, softening him down, “I just know what kind of relationship you’d want from me, and I’m not the man to give it to you. I can’t just be with one person, and I never fall in love the conventional way. I love you as much as I can love, and it’s still not enough that I would call you my boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Whatever,” he chuckles, “You’ve gotta accept that.”

Sam placed both hands on Blaine’s face, letting out a distressed grunt. “God, stop _talking_ , you’re really the worst. Everything coming out of your mouth upsets me.”

Blaine chuckled against his skin and then pushed his face past the barrier of his hands to kiss him once more. “What if I told you I’m horny, though, and that if you’re available I’m more than willing for something naughty, then?”

Sam blushed again, averting his eyes from him. “Do you think you’d manage to make it good for me?” he said, “Some parts of me I don’t like to be touched. And I don’t wanna do it if it means I have to tell you no, not that all of the time.”

“Mmh,” Blaine sat down on the grass, dragging him on his lap and wrapping his arms around his waist. “I’ve got a nice instinct when it comes to moving. I think I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve got instinct when you’re fighting, Blaine,” Sam sighed, settling against him, “I don’t know if it’s the same when you have sex.”

Blaine’s lips parted in a mischievous grin, as he leaned forward to place a wet kiss on his neck. “Wanna bet?” he whispered against his skin, and Sam, realizing for the umpteenth time since he had met him that he would never be able to understand nor predict any of Blaine’s thoughts and actions, closed his eyes and let him work his dark matter magic.

Five years later, the city’s free, no dragons in sight, and the whole area, including the neighborhoods closer to the outer borders, has been reclaimed by human beings, which have started repopulating it. Blaine took care of this charge for freedom personally, fighting on the front line to make sure he was fulfilling the purpose he believed to be his own in this life.

Praised by the population of the whole city, he’s grown into a handsome, adventurous man, scarred by claws and fire and yet so enticing people can’t stop staring at him whenever he walks down the street. The dragon scales he braided into his dark wide curls shimmer in the sunlight as he moves, and the long yellowing fang he wears tied to a leather strap around his neck wiggles on his half-bare chest with every step he takes. Women and men both regard him as a hero despite his personality being as far as heroic as a personality could ever get, at least in Sam’s mind, but though many things have changed over the years one’s surely still the same: he still struggles to leave his side, even though now he’s not a _him_ anymore, but a _her_.

She takes a deep breath as she watches him settle the backpack over his shoulders by making it bounce a couple times. The incredible number of things he’s tied to every possible strap coming out of it rattle with every move he makes, turning him into a weirdly funny one-man percussion ensemble.

“B,” she sighs, crossing her arms over her chest, “I’m not sure you’re going to survive the weight of this until your next stop.”

“Are you kidding me?” he smirks proudly, “I’ve carried dragons upon these shoulders.”

“Come on, it was a pup. And it was just that one time.”

“That pup weighted like a cow, Sam.”

“Still,” she sighs again as she flicks his ear, “It’s a long way ‘till the next village, once you’re out in the desert.”

“I’ve got my tent, my gun and my knife, I’ll be alright.”

“But I could be useful-- I mean, if I came with you,” she insists, kind of fretting, “I’ve gotten good at healing wounds and curing poisoning, I would certainly--”

He laughs and covers the distance between them, kissing her nice and slow – she knows – just to quit her babbling.

“You’ll be more useful here, Sam,” he says after a little while, parting from her, “Remember? Everyone has their thing to do. This is yours. Mine’s out there.”

“Yeah, traveling from village to village hoping some chief will be desperate and stupid enough to let you have his firstborn son or daughter to fuck while you clear the region from dragons,” she chuckles, pushing him away with a hand on his face, “You’re still the worst.”

“But you still love me,” he grins, blatantly satisfied with himself.

This will be the first time they part ways since they met ten years ago in that wrecked building. Since Blaine saved her life. Since she took him in. Since they started sharing a bundle of blanket that was home for months, before they could aspire to anything better.

She has no idea what her life will become once he’s not around to make it the adventure of a lifetime. But she knows something, now. It might be true that no one knows where the dragons came from, what they’re here to do and how to finally defeat them, but this doesn’t mean their arrival was without a purpose.

If only to make a dark matter star help shine bright, they arrived for a reason. Like Blaine says, after all, everyone has their thing to do. The dragon’s thing is to make Blaine the most essential person humanity holds within its ranks. And if Sam thinks about it in these terms, she can accept not knowing anything else about them.


End file.
